Watching professional athletes at peak performance is a thrill. The Olympic Games, just completed, gave us many moments of vicarious pleasure as skaters zoomed across the ice and skiers raced downhill at 80 milers per hour. It was fun to watch on TV, but I imagine it was much better standing on the sidelines in Turin.

I have gotten this same heightened sense of joy at the ability of human beings to perform feats of physicality that I can only dream of doing at Safeco field and at Key Arena. Sitting close to the action, embedded in a sea of cheering fans and crunching popcorn underfoot adds several dimension to the spectacle. I have paid for tickets to big time sporting events a few times, and been at football, baseball and basketball games on freebie tickets more often, or as someone's guest.

But I have a problem with it all and it began in 1976.

When the idea was first proposed to built a sports and convention stadium for the Puget Sound region, several sites were considered. One of them would have put the Kingdome in Kent, you may recall.

But politics, in the hands of the venerable then-King County Executive John Spellman, caused the $76 million project to be wedged into spot at the edge of town between Pioneer Square and the train stations.

At the time, I was interested in the behind-the-scenes machinations that resulted in locating the Kingdome where it was built. I thought it was ludicrous to put it there for what it would do to traffic at some times of day. These concerns proved real, but over time, we seemed to accept the problems the way you get used to a bad knee.

I always thought the Kingdome was ugly, an architectural monstrosity that resembled a melting Big Mac. The acoustics inside were bad, the peripheral walkways had all the appeal of a prison (I've visited the prison in Monroe but only for a few hours, not as an inmate).

When the roof fell in a few years back and the King County Council voted to spends millions to fix the old place up, I shuddered. Frankly, when the thing was blown up, I was glad.

What I wasn't glad about was that the taxpayers were asked to pay for the building in the first place. And the arguments used then to support it are the same one trotted out later to garner support for the taxpayers footing the bill for Qwest Field (ugh) and The Safe (ugh again). When I drive along the freeway and see those huge tangles of metal, all I can think is that they might look good when they are finished. The giant arms of metal make both structures look like some sort of arachnid attacking Seattle.

And guess what? You're paying for them. The well-heeled owners of the Mariners and the Seahawks coerced the state legislature into underwriting the cost of building the sports venues with your money. That fact never set well with some of us.

Lately, when I caught a glimpse of Howard Schultz, the founder and owner of Starbucks and also the owner of the Seattle Sonics at a news conference begging for state money to rebuild the Key Arena, I shuddered.

You have to give the guy credit though. Here is a ridiculously wealthy guy who made his money selling a legal drug (caffeine) to the nation and who made enough money to buy his own professional basketball team asking us to make the venue nicer for his team and its fans.

I am not one of the fans of either the idea or the team. That fact aside, why should be pay for this?

Schultz says the rent is too high already and the building not good enough for his private business to operate in. He wants something in the neighbohood of $170 million to spruce up the joint.

What do we get for that?

We get longer traffic tie-ups on the Mercer Street exit while customers of his (basketball fans) crowd toward the Seattle Center.

I feel the same way about supporting Howard as I do about supporting Paul Allen. Let the people who want this form of entertainment pay for it.

When the monorail was proposed a couple of years ago, Seattleites who are the users of the system voted five times to pay for it through their taxes, until it got out of control and they dumped the idea finally. But they were all for it for a long time and understood they would have to pay for the system.

I just can't really understand why our legislators allow themselves to be sucked into a mob mentality where they vote to tax us for these private businesses.

Schultz wants to tax restaurants and hotels to pay for the upgrades. If I owned a restaurant, I would be steaming mad and certainly would eschew serving Starbucks coffee.

My view: let Schultz pay for the upgrades. It's his private business, one that creates enough inconveniences and expense for the city already. The whole scene of him sitting quietly next to the guy from the National Basketball Association at the hearing in Olympia reminded me of a scene from a Steve Martin movie where a rich guy comes to see Martin, who has gotten rich himself, about a handout to fix the seats in his airplane because they are worn and he is embarrassed to take his friends flying.

Two wrongs have already been commited. It was wrong to steer public money into the football and baseball stadiums and it is wrong to do it for basketball.